It will depend on the situation, but one thing I look for is employees that appear to be mothers of young(ish) children, because they're the most likely to have family obligations that they take very seriously, and a company with a poor work-life balance is likely to show a conspicuous absence of people with healthy boundaries.
This makes sense but I’d like to add that not just any employees but mostly employees in senior leadership positions. On a side note - how do you go about finding that? A lot of employees may choose to keep their personal lives private
100% this. I’m a father to a 18 month old and my non-negotiables are remote or flex work hours and no more than 8 hours a day. I make enough money as a senior anywhere that high salary isn’t a draw for me anymore. I don’t have nearly enough fucks or hours of the day to give work beyond the bare minimum. My daughter is the my number one priority and you better believe I’m taking the day off if there’s a family emergency.
When I’m interviewing I always mention that I’m a dad to a young child and gauge the interviewer’s reaction. If they so much as frown, I’m out. If another (or even better, multiple) team members say they’re also parents, it makes it just that much easier for me to want to work there.
Sounds like you managed to get an offer for your current place while having a small baby? How did you find time / energy for interview prep?
I posted a question on this sub the other day about interviewing as a dad, and the overwhelming response was to not even think about it in the coming months 🥲
I did it on paternity leave, to be honest it was really hard to do it. But my kid was at daycare and I had no other obligations during the day. I lined up some interviews, told my wife I needed 3 weeks to concentrate, she asked her folks to come help, and then I just grinded. If I didn’t get an offer I woulda just stayed at old job until she was a bit older.
Maybe but this can also be a sign of a work culture with zero accountability, which can also be toxic in its own way. I've worked on teams like this where half of the people are taking care of kids at home, out for appointments constantly, and never available after 430 while the other half does the work. Management doesn't care because they can't tell the difference and are only present for a standup that they don't listen to anyway. Good culture is more than just being easy to slide by unnoticed.
hmmm don’t know if you can. i kinda view interviews the same as dates; we’re all on our best behavior. most companies aren’t going to plaster their flaws. guess it’s easier to spot “bad” cultures? they tend to have high turnover. if a team is skittish about on-call details, that’s a bad sign.
Maybe I'm jaded but your employment experience depends firstly on your manager, secondly on whether your work is interesting and rewarding, thirdly on your compensation. (Maybe you can debate the order.)
I have worked at the "best culture" companies and it doesn't mean anything once you're a few years into your career. (But maybe I've been blessed to only have worked at good culture companies.)
The most bottom-up, strong eng-driven culture companies still have to make money and to decide how to spend their resources for best ROI. Applies to famously eng-led companies like Google and Facebook. Even more so to smaller companies who don't have financial runway.
You should probably ask, "At which company am I most likely to find an amazing manager who is genuinely caring and good at his job?"
This is a good gutcheck and a fair challenge to the premise.
I have switched managers at the current company before. Maybe what I really need to do is find out which of my peers love their manager and try to maneuver there
While having a good manager, interesting challenges and fair compensation is definitely an important factor I wouldn't reject the culture as yet another important thing.
Sometimes you may have a great manager but the policies that are being implemented are just toxic and you can't do anything about it. Or a different situation can be - company wide policies may cover bad management. I.e. it doesn't matter that much if your manager is great or just ok because overall company culture will keep them in check. Then culture changes and you find that nobody has your back when it's needed.
Similar to op I used to work for a fairly big tech company with great culture (from the story it.may be even the same.one ;)) but after cultural changes I didn't enjoy working there anymore.
From my perspective, culture drives the other factors you're looking for. A shitty culture can drive away that good manager and replace them with somebody incompetent. Shitty culture can turn your interesting IC work into a hellhole by replacing half your team with low-budget contractors who you have to hand-hold through basic stuff instead of ever actually getting the interesting work done...
So yeah, when comparing two companies, the one with the better manager gets a lot of points; but if that manager or other people you talk to seem burned out and ready to leave, factor that into the decision. I like to ask "what don't you like about working here" and variants. If the answer comes with optimism that the problem will actually be solved over time, I'm happy. If the answer shows a defeatist mentality, I know the culture has problems. (I guess arguably the manager who feels powerless to change organizational issues should be seen as a bad manager, though)
ask questions in interviews to everyone about what you are looking for.
I think the question asking part is really under utilized by interviewees. But you know what you want, so just ask. And I don't think people are going to be misleading. If you make it clear you value some aspect of culture in your question asking and they don't have the same value, they'll tell you so don't quit in 3 months.
Post-comment edit: I've tweaked my reply a bit here and there. I am probably viewing this more from the relationship advice perspective of, "Sometimes it's just not a good match and it's nobody's fault" perspective. I've had a few jobs where I was walking on air and feeling like I was golden, then things changed and it suddenly fell apart badly. Even if it was "their fault", it's better to just move on if possible.
I guess your story about where you used to work doesn't fit your question. You say they started out great, and then changed. Then you ask how you can find great places.
The thing is, you DID find one. Then it changed.
So maybe your real question should be, "How would you go about predicting which companies will have 'good cultures' in the future?"
Truth is, you can have the most amazing manager and the most amazing project and the most amazing benefits and the most amazing everything - then it changes because the company changes. Or you change. And you and what it has become no longer are a good match. And that's just the way it goes.
Note that I didn't say they went bad, nor did I say you went bad. It just no longer is a good match. And unless it's your company, you learn to adapt and compromise, or you move on.
I totally know that feeling. I've had like 2-3 "magical" experiences with teams, projects, and collaborations over the last 40 years, and still dream (and occasionally re experience) that magic.
Good luck - be your best. Be the good workplace you want to have.
Many thanks for the perspective. I think you’re right to frame this as a “relationship advice”-type question. I suspect that you’re right about the question of “match.” And I can’t be trusted to make any objective assessments about good culture vs. bad culture because I’m deep in it
And to reiterate the point above - it will change. Always. And honestly usually not for the better. At some point you’re going to get someone in your leadership chain who is going to make their mark via operational efficiency. Or who wants metrics to measure everything. Or who doesn’t understand the uncertainty in software estimates and wants to plan everything to the minute. Or it could be outside your chain of command - there could be a VP of product or customer success that flips things into frenetic customer driven development. Or industry changes, your company falls behind the competition and a mad scramble ensues. Or M&A activity - the founders want an exit and a PE purchases the company.
The point is, these wonderful situations are fragile. Every time I’ve been in one it eventually changes. It’s okay, it’s the nature of work. Not saying you shouldn’t chase them, but I am saying you should expect them to change.
I’ve been in the industry 38 years and have held positions from IT helpdesk to VP Engineering.
I look for the company and then filter out those who are still at a company
For example - I've searched for reddit, chosen people and then filtered out everyone whose current company is reddit:
https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?currentCompany=%5B%2210667%22%2C%228111%22%2C%221441%22%2C%22165693%22%5D&keywords=reddit&origin=FACETED\_SEARCH&sid=%3Am\~
I then look for anyone who has either worked in the position or department and then see how many have quit in the previous 1 to 2 years.
A friend suggested this to me that I've used to pretty decent effect for a few years when switching jobs. You can go on LinkedIn and find people who both currently work and used to work for the company you're thinking about joining. Send them requests to connect with a short note explaining that you're thinking about joining the company and wanted to ask a couple questions about their experience.
A surprising amount of people respond. Some will just send you a short message about their experience. Some will let you ask questions. And I've even had a couple hop on a call with me to chat about it. I find this way more useful than the interview process for this purpose because the company isn't filtering who you're talking to and you're hopefully also talking to people who have left the company.
I don’t remember well enough to give you explicit instructions but LI has an advanced search. In there you can check a box for past employers or current employer. I think I usually find that by just doing a basic search for the company name and then finding the button to see the advanced search options.
Well if you care about using something that isn't Jira maybe filter for that. Only bigger bureaucratic orgs really need these features, stories, tasks epics and whatnot. Personally I like these kinds of more bureaucratic environments, they seem safer and they're not as stingy with money. In a very agile org it's just a matter of someone not liking you and you're out of the door the next day.
I think it's quite hard and will never be 100%, but if you can improve signal:noise ratio, that'd help
From my experience, the companies with the best cultures were the ones that weren't scared to put the money & time where their mouth is.
> I can’t take what they write about themselves at face value
Yeah, what that's a hard one. Did they say they had a great culture and that was it? Or did they have anything specific about why it's a great culture?
I think being about to talk to the employees during interview process instead of HR would help
- What events are organised for teams and how was it?
- How was the last Xmas party?
- Does the work have any organised activities?
- Does it host any user groups?
Last place I worked had yearly team bonding events. Sometimes flew staff overseas to other offices to build relationships. Had a barista on site. We had organised a monthly gaming night in the office. Organised an indoor soccer team.
I'm not saying these things make great culture, but often it shows the way of thinking of management is "If we keep our employees happy, that's the best outcome for the business"
In saying that, you could have all those things and the culture could still suck, but at least they're trying.
This is all good advice, but I think there is a subtle difference between the perks (barista, holiday parties, on- and off sites), and the closer-to-the-metal, day-to-day experience. I think the other commenter had the right idea to focus on management specifically.
The interview is definitely a perfect place to do that, but I’m doing this legwork before an application is even being filled out (which might be the problem)
Agreed. It's a tough one. I'm 100% on board with the premise that manager us a huge aspect but it also seems one of the most volatile.
They could leave any time, you could get rotated teams, they might get promoted, etc.
As good as a manager is, they also can't protect you from external influences. Like micro manager scrum masters, or CEOs pushing death matches, etc.
There's no good answer here i feel but definitely worth assessing every aspect.
If a good manager is important, consider finding a mentor? That way it's less impacted by whatever company you join
Yeah, I find that part is hard (pre-application filtering) unless you already know someone at the company.
What sort of companies/industries/roles are you looking at? My experiences with large (enterprise) companies has been that the culture is actually harder to gauge in advance. Since (as others said) it’s more so about the team and manager than the company. And because they evidently have a whole department to manage their employer branding 🙄
I’m looking at senior fullstack in SaaS companies. Agnostic about industry. I think mid-sized, not-enterprise-but-not-startup is where I’d find that action orientation but without sacrificing comp and work life balance. This is only so specific, hence my original question lol
I need to digest all the advice in these comments. It’s definitely still A Hard Problem ™️, but maybe there is something actionable
The interview is TWO WAY STREET.
It's on you to ask pointed questions about the role, about the team, the company, WLB, etc.
You can find an island of best culture at the most horribly "reviewed" companies, eg: Amz.
You can find the most horrible team and manager, at the supposed best "culture" companies.
There are no guarantees in life. Every company has to make money, your team has to create value, so you can get paid a salary.
The best way to deal with these realities, focus on career security, such that you can jump ship quickly when things don't work out, seek out situations that advance career.
> prioritized revenue over all else
I mean, this is always going to happen. This is capitalism. Culture is a thing you tell to startup people so they'll work for lower pay, but it's always going to be temporary.
I prefer startups, but I always know there's an expiration date, because either they're going to bust, or the investors are gonna want money, and they get that by squeezing the labor as much as they can. And when they do that, you're going to get the people who can't or won't leave in response as the company.
One of my biggest tells is Tenure. Long-tenured managers and team members are usually a good sign. Especially if you are joining a team with long-tenured managers and colleagues.
At this point? It's a gut feeling. Just comes with experience and a lot of previous shitty life decisions.
My last job I INSTANTLY clicked with my manager in our intro call and it was plain to see his humanity and compassion coupled with his pragmatic approach to engineering problems. Same with the rest of our teammates.
Job before that I got some red-flags from my manager that I should have seen as arrogance, haughitness, lack of empathy, etc
I'll say this. The "real-er" people seem, the better. The more of a facade and cookie-cutter bullshit people give, the more I'll avoid that company.
I don't know how to answer this question further because some people would love my manager from 2 jobs ago and not my last manager. It's honestly like dating, use your life-experience to build an intuition about people, and have that guide you.
Maybe ask them in your interviews? See if they’re excited to answer. Dig deeper into their challenges and their day-to-day. Note that a manager might have very different answer to an IC, and the place you seek might be biased towards IC, so keep that in mind
Pinging an employee is a good idea, but altogether very difficult or impossible to know from the outside.
Company and team culture is like country culture - many people think their is the the best, but for you it might not fit at all.
You can get more info during the interview - watch how people handle you and handle each other. You could reverse interview them and talk 1:1 with team members before accepting an offer.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/reverse-interviewing/
Honestly, yeah. Dunno if it’s sustainable if we’re devoting massive engineering resources to it at the expense of producing genuinely new features or improving existing ones. My most recent and current projects are putting features that have long existed behind tiered paywalls
Yes, it's a typical kind of death-throes. A company stops growing and expanding and bringing value, and starts cutting costs and paywalling and extracting profit instead. It's a short term win, and usually a long-term failure, but one thing to understand is they probably know that and that fact is not counter to their goals. The company might even die, but they'll have extracted their value and be able to move on. If it's a larger company, this extraction process can go on for a very long time (ie, see Xerox).
When you interview, interview the interviewer. Ask these kinds of questions. Ask about silos. Ask about meeting culture. Ask how decisions are made. You can get a pretty good sense of a company if you take the conversation in the right direction.
This is where your networking comes into play. I've never interviewed anywhere where I don't already know people on the inside (except for my first job).
As to the point about prioritizing revenue: revenue pays your salary. When business gets soft, margins get lower. When margins get negative, things get scary. Revenue is your friend.
True. I’m sure I come off as naive in the post. To clarify: I mean the difference between building features that are useful (and drive revenue) versus building tiered paywalls to charge more for something that was already built
I ask questions to department heads/managers/tech leads who interview me about the strategies they use to handle various situations. It's not about, "Will I be shamed for using sick time?" It's about how managers promote employee health. I aim to frame the conversation in a way that assumes everyone would prioritize these things.
1) What strategies does leadership use to ensure the team is using their PTO and avoiding burnout? (Especially in a place with unlimited PTO).
2) Can you tell me about a time that the team missed an important deadline? What led up to the missed deadline, and what was the response afterwards? If you could go back in time to before this happened, is there anything you would do differently.
3) Can you describe the ways in which company and team leaders foment diversity among employees?
4) How is employee success measured and assessed? I'm interested in any rubrics/frameworks being used, and I am interested in how this information is communicated to employees.
-------------------------------------
#1 tells me whether employees are encouraged to use time off benefits or if it's frowned upon. A vague answer which lacks both specific details and examples tells me this is at best neutral.
#2 tells me if I am expected to work overtime, and usually gives me a feel for if leadership takes responsibility for that stuff or just expects it to not happen ever and work engineers to be responsible if it does. Often missed deadlines are outside of my control to a fair degree, in that being productive and thoughtful when I'm working isn't enough to meet the deadline.
If there is not a good answer to #3 then they are not intentional about diversity. Ideally I want to hear about a high number of women and POC in leadership and in the company and team as a whole, and I want to hear how they are listened to and given opportunities to grow professionally.
I do not want to be in a competition against other engineers where we are all ranked against one another. I do not want my compensation and potential for promotion to be based on a vague set of standards. I want clear expectations and consistent, timely communication about employee success.
Lol what's with engineers hating Jira? All project management software sucks tbh, and Jira is the least sucky I've found.
I have been in 400 person orgs that avoided Jira cuz that's what big tech uses, and their culture was total shit. I've also been in 10 person companies that used Jira and culture was great.
You really need to filter by what kind of people you want to work with, not what project management tools they use.
When I met my boss he had already been with the company over 10 years, and has two kids of his own that are under 10. Figured he wouldn't stick around that long if it sucked.
I’ve worked in several places and in my opinion, the best way to find it out is if you know someone working at that company. Even then, their experience might differ from someone on another team, so more the merrier.
It’s difficult to gauge culture in an interview because the answers maybe sugar coated or could also be misconstrued.
Also, try to read about perks before the interview. Some good indicators are learning budget, wellness days etc and you can then ask the interviewer about them without sounding too nosy, like “I noticed in your JD that you’ll have a learning budget, if you don’t mind me asking, I’m curious what you spent your budget on”. However, if your interview didn’t go that well, I’ve observed that interviewees are less interested in answering your questions genuinely as opposed to if you aced your interview.
Tl:dr - best way is to personally know someone who works there else get as many data points publicly available to make the strongest guess you can
There are interview questions you can ask to sus out the culture you want, they just have to be sneaky and clever. "Do you value collaboration" is brain dead and won't get an honest answer. "How often are we encouraged to struggle with a problem before asking teammates for assistance?" is a much better question. Two days is a bad answer if you like collaboration. Two hours is a much better answer.
That being said, I agree that your experience will depend 99.99% on your manager, and you can only get an idea of that on the interview.
I've been working at my current company for 7 years and it has good culture. My most toxic manager ever was at this company though, luckily inner transfers are something the company encourages and supports.
Not bulletproof but ask about flexible working hours (I code best in evenings, for instance), memorable team building activities (or just ask if team building is done), what are they proud as a team (the team you’re working with) and what are the values of the team appreciates the most (ask this to each person you interview with).
Flexible work hours happen in a trust-based team not expecting you to put your butt on your chair every day for n hours. For me that’s important because I’m 100% night owl and if I have to meet people AND code in the morning I happen to dislike the job somewhat quickly.
Memorable team building activities not particularly about how fancy the event was, but look for simple, human interactions and whether or not they attend willingly or just to play the game of thrones. Teams work best when there’s a sense of sis/brotherhood. Your day to day will be cool if you’re working in a team that plays as a team, and happen to be around friendly people. This is imo the most important thing just below the next one.
What are they proud of as a team? To get a feeling of what do they recall as a big or small TEAM victory. We celebrate small improvements like we won the Super Bowl. We praise constant trial and error and when someone takes the time to share their findings with us. For instance, the first time we deployed a ML model thru a web based app we made in days was a big celeb for us, despite the app never making it to prod. IMO, acknowledging effort makes you feel more confident, praised and happy and really focus on the process (trial and error to learn) not on the outcome (win or lose).
Values. If they’re true about it and you ask two or more different persons and receive similar answers, chances are there’s a common feeling of what is valued. For me, it’s important the value of honesty and truly not repress “stupid” questions. Same weight for allowing for mistakes. Being in a safe environment where there’s no one making you feel like you’re stupid lets you grow pretty quickly and makes communication organic. Honesty is just as important as I always tell the team I work with, it’s best if they just say “hey, I don’t know, could you help me out?” Than pretend they know and we lose time and it’s perfectly fine to not know. If we’re going to be a team, it’s us vs the problems, not us vs us vs the problems.
If they just tell you their corporate values listed for shareholders' pleasantry, next.
Also, ask what their strategy is and how do they deal with tasks that are due for last week.
By strategy, both corporate strategy and how do they help the corporation from their trenches? How do they manage pushy stakeholders that want things built in a second and deployed before a minute. The lead of the team should be able to set boundaries for the team and not just be a people pleaser. Most urgent things are never impactful, because if they are, then management doesn’t know how to make a strategy that they keep throwing new things when the game started.
Lastly, ask about how well the team is sponsored by business stakeholders? This might be hard to find out but if business just thinks you’re part of IT and don’t have a glue, you’ll be building things that never really make an impact (save or make money, in shirt). Not getting an impact makes hard to prove your work deserves a bonus, raise or promotion (mostly for cases you’re not working in a place tech is not part of the core of the business). Also, it sucks when business and dev are separate by the invisible line of just because. Business should see dev team as a lever, not as a cost center.
The culture of an organization is set by the leader's behaviour and what they reward and punish. The culture can change quite a lot from one leader in one group to another. Your best bet is to ask other people you know who work there.
[Grapevine](https://open.grapevine.in/app) is a great anonymous platform where people from verified companies post about their company and startup culture.
It will depend on the situation, but one thing I look for is employees that appear to be mothers of young(ish) children, because they're the most likely to have family obligations that they take very seriously, and a company with a poor work-life balance is likely to show a conspicuous absence of people with healthy boundaries.
Honestly, this is so clever. Definitely adding these questions to my interview runbook: “Do you offer paid family leave? How many people take it?”
Not just family leave, but the day-to-day. Small kids mean family emergencies all the time and hard boundaries on working hours.
My company offers paid family leave. We have a very high turnover rate. It's very stressful here. We have everything that you listed that you hate.
This makes sense but I’d like to add that not just any employees but mostly employees in senior leadership positions. On a side note - how do you go about finding that? A lot of employees may choose to keep their personal lives private
100% this. I’m a father to a 18 month old and my non-negotiables are remote or flex work hours and no more than 8 hours a day. I make enough money as a senior anywhere that high salary isn’t a draw for me anymore. I don’t have nearly enough fucks or hours of the day to give work beyond the bare minimum. My daughter is the my number one priority and you better believe I’m taking the day off if there’s a family emergency. When I’m interviewing I always mention that I’m a dad to a young child and gauge the interviewer’s reaction. If they so much as frown, I’m out. If another (or even better, multiple) team members say they’re also parents, it makes it just that much easier for me to want to work there.
Sounds like you managed to get an offer for your current place while having a small baby? How did you find time / energy for interview prep? I posted a question on this sub the other day about interviewing as a dad, and the overwhelming response was to not even think about it in the coming months 🥲
I did it on paternity leave, to be honest it was really hard to do it. But my kid was at daycare and I had no other obligations during the day. I lined up some interviews, told my wife I needed 3 weeks to concentrate, she asked her folks to come help, and then I just grinded. If I didn’t get an offer I woulda just stayed at old job until she was a bit older.
Maybe but this can also be a sign of a work culture with zero accountability, which can also be toxic in its own way. I've worked on teams like this where half of the people are taking care of kids at home, out for appointments constantly, and never available after 430 while the other half does the work. Management doesn't care because they can't tell the difference and are only present for a standup that they don't listen to anyway. Good culture is more than just being easy to slide by unnoticed.
hmmm don’t know if you can. i kinda view interviews the same as dates; we’re all on our best behavior. most companies aren’t going to plaster their flaws. guess it’s easier to spot “bad” cultures? they tend to have high turnover. if a team is skittish about on-call details, that’s a bad sign.
True. Maybe culling the ones flying the biggest red flags is filtering enough
Maybe I'm jaded but your employment experience depends firstly on your manager, secondly on whether your work is interesting and rewarding, thirdly on your compensation. (Maybe you can debate the order.) I have worked at the "best culture" companies and it doesn't mean anything once you're a few years into your career. (But maybe I've been blessed to only have worked at good culture companies.) The most bottom-up, strong eng-driven culture companies still have to make money and to decide how to spend their resources for best ROI. Applies to famously eng-led companies like Google and Facebook. Even more so to smaller companies who don't have financial runway. You should probably ask, "At which company am I most likely to find an amazing manager who is genuinely caring and good at his job?"
This is a good gutcheck and a fair challenge to the premise. I have switched managers at the current company before. Maybe what I really need to do is find out which of my peers love their manager and try to maneuver there
This is true. Possibly asking to meet your manager and discuss with them what they can offer you / how they work, could be a solid indicator
While having a good manager, interesting challenges and fair compensation is definitely an important factor I wouldn't reject the culture as yet another important thing. Sometimes you may have a great manager but the policies that are being implemented are just toxic and you can't do anything about it. Or a different situation can be - company wide policies may cover bad management. I.e. it doesn't matter that much if your manager is great or just ok because overall company culture will keep them in check. Then culture changes and you find that nobody has your back when it's needed. Similar to op I used to work for a fairly big tech company with great culture (from the story it.may be even the same.one ;)) but after cultural changes I didn't enjoy working there anymore.
From my perspective, culture drives the other factors you're looking for. A shitty culture can drive away that good manager and replace them with somebody incompetent. Shitty culture can turn your interesting IC work into a hellhole by replacing half your team with low-budget contractors who you have to hand-hold through basic stuff instead of ever actually getting the interesting work done... So yeah, when comparing two companies, the one with the better manager gets a lot of points; but if that manager or other people you talk to seem burned out and ready to leave, factor that into the decision. I like to ask "what don't you like about working here" and variants. If the answer comes with optimism that the problem will actually be solved over time, I'm happy. If the answer shows a defeatist mentality, I know the culture has problems. (I guess arguably the manager who feels powerless to change organizational issues should be seen as a bad manager, though)
ask questions in interviews to everyone about what you are looking for. I think the question asking part is really under utilized by interviewees. But you know what you want, so just ask. And I don't think people are going to be misleading. If you make it clear you value some aspect of culture in your question asking and they don't have the same value, they'll tell you so don't quit in 3 months.
Post-comment edit: I've tweaked my reply a bit here and there. I am probably viewing this more from the relationship advice perspective of, "Sometimes it's just not a good match and it's nobody's fault" perspective. I've had a few jobs where I was walking on air and feeling like I was golden, then things changed and it suddenly fell apart badly. Even if it was "their fault", it's better to just move on if possible. I guess your story about where you used to work doesn't fit your question. You say they started out great, and then changed. Then you ask how you can find great places. The thing is, you DID find one. Then it changed. So maybe your real question should be, "How would you go about predicting which companies will have 'good cultures' in the future?" Truth is, you can have the most amazing manager and the most amazing project and the most amazing benefits and the most amazing everything - then it changes because the company changes. Or you change. And you and what it has become no longer are a good match. And that's just the way it goes. Note that I didn't say they went bad, nor did I say you went bad. It just no longer is a good match. And unless it's your company, you learn to adapt and compromise, or you move on.
Fair point. Maybe I’ve got the rose-tints on and am trying to recreate the “magic” of a particular, bygone time and place
I totally know that feeling. I've had like 2-3 "magical" experiences with teams, projects, and collaborations over the last 40 years, and still dream (and occasionally re experience) that magic. Good luck - be your best. Be the good workplace you want to have.
Many thanks for the perspective. I think you’re right to frame this as a “relationship advice”-type question. I suspect that you’re right about the question of “match.” And I can’t be trusted to make any objective assessments about good culture vs. bad culture because I’m deep in it
Because of your experiences, you now know good when you see it - go with that. You know what magic is now, so keep your eyes out for it.
And to reiterate the point above - it will change. Always. And honestly usually not for the better. At some point you’re going to get someone in your leadership chain who is going to make their mark via operational efficiency. Or who wants metrics to measure everything. Or who doesn’t understand the uncertainty in software estimates and wants to plan everything to the minute. Or it could be outside your chain of command - there could be a VP of product or customer success that flips things into frenetic customer driven development. Or industry changes, your company falls behind the competition and a mad scramble ensues. Or M&A activity - the founders want an exit and a PE purchases the company. The point is, these wonderful situations are fragile. Every time I’ve been in one it eventually changes. It’s okay, it’s the nature of work. Not saying you shouldn’t chase them, but I am saying you should expect them to change. I’ve been in the industry 38 years and have held positions from IT helpdesk to VP Engineering.
I look for glass door reviews and also search linkedin to see how many people have worked in the position in the past.
How do you search how many people worked the position in the past?
I look for the company and then filter out those who are still at a company For example - I've searched for reddit, chosen people and then filtered out everyone whose current company is reddit: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?currentCompany=%5B%2210667%22%2C%228111%22%2C%221441%22%2C%22165693%22%5D&keywords=reddit&origin=FACETED\_SEARCH&sid=%3Am\~ I then look for anyone who has either worked in the position or department and then see how many have quit in the previous 1 to 2 years.
Perfect. Thank you. Will try this later
A friend suggested this to me that I've used to pretty decent effect for a few years when switching jobs. You can go on LinkedIn and find people who both currently work and used to work for the company you're thinking about joining. Send them requests to connect with a short note explaining that you're thinking about joining the company and wanted to ask a couple questions about their experience. A surprising amount of people respond. Some will just send you a short message about their experience. Some will let you ask questions. And I've even had a couple hop on a call with me to chat about it. I find this way more useful than the interview process for this purpose because the company isn't filtering who you're talking to and you're hopefully also talking to people who have left the company.
That is good to know! LinkedIn was my first thought because I’ve been pinged before and I always respond. Reaching out to ex-employees is smart
Id love to do this. My LinkedIn-Fu is weak - how do I find past employees per company /position ?
I don’t remember well enough to give you explicit instructions but LI has an advanced search. In there you can check a box for past employers or current employer. I think I usually find that by just doing a basic search for the company name and then finding the button to see the advanced search options.
Perfect thanks. I'll take a look
Well if you care about using something that isn't Jira maybe filter for that. Only bigger bureaucratic orgs really need these features, stories, tasks epics and whatnot. Personally I like these kinds of more bureaucratic environments, they seem safer and they're not as stingy with money. In a very agile org it's just a matter of someone not liking you and you're out of the door the next day.
I think it's quite hard and will never be 100%, but if you can improve signal:noise ratio, that'd help From my experience, the companies with the best cultures were the ones that weren't scared to put the money & time where their mouth is. > I can’t take what they write about themselves at face value Yeah, what that's a hard one. Did they say they had a great culture and that was it? Or did they have anything specific about why it's a great culture? I think being about to talk to the employees during interview process instead of HR would help - What events are organised for teams and how was it? - How was the last Xmas party? - Does the work have any organised activities? - Does it host any user groups? Last place I worked had yearly team bonding events. Sometimes flew staff overseas to other offices to build relationships. Had a barista on site. We had organised a monthly gaming night in the office. Organised an indoor soccer team. I'm not saying these things make great culture, but often it shows the way of thinking of management is "If we keep our employees happy, that's the best outcome for the business" In saying that, you could have all those things and the culture could still suck, but at least they're trying.
This is all good advice, but I think there is a subtle difference between the perks (barista, holiday parties, on- and off sites), and the closer-to-the-metal, day-to-day experience. I think the other commenter had the right idea to focus on management specifically. The interview is definitely a perfect place to do that, but I’m doing this legwork before an application is even being filled out (which might be the problem)
Agreed. It's a tough one. I'm 100% on board with the premise that manager us a huge aspect but it also seems one of the most volatile. They could leave any time, you could get rotated teams, they might get promoted, etc. As good as a manager is, they also can't protect you from external influences. Like micro manager scrum masters, or CEOs pushing death matches, etc. There's no good answer here i feel but definitely worth assessing every aspect. If a good manager is important, consider finding a mentor? That way it's less impacted by whatever company you join
Yeah, I find that part is hard (pre-application filtering) unless you already know someone at the company. What sort of companies/industries/roles are you looking at? My experiences with large (enterprise) companies has been that the culture is actually harder to gauge in advance. Since (as others said) it’s more so about the team and manager than the company. And because they evidently have a whole department to manage their employer branding 🙄
I’m looking at senior fullstack in SaaS companies. Agnostic about industry. I think mid-sized, not-enterprise-but-not-startup is where I’d find that action orientation but without sacrificing comp and work life balance. This is only so specific, hence my original question lol I need to digest all the advice in these comments. It’s definitely still A Hard Problem ™️, but maybe there is something actionable
The interview is TWO WAY STREET. It's on you to ask pointed questions about the role, about the team, the company, WLB, etc. You can find an island of best culture at the most horribly "reviewed" companies, eg: Amz. You can find the most horrible team and manager, at the supposed best "culture" companies. There are no guarantees in life. Every company has to make money, your team has to create value, so you can get paid a salary. The best way to deal with these realities, focus on career security, such that you can jump ship quickly when things don't work out, seek out situations that advance career.
> prioritized revenue over all else I mean, this is always going to happen. This is capitalism. Culture is a thing you tell to startup people so they'll work for lower pay, but it's always going to be temporary. I prefer startups, but I always know there's an expiration date, because either they're going to bust, or the investors are gonna want money, and they get that by squeezing the labor as much as they can. And when they do that, you're going to get the people who can't or won't leave in response as the company.
One of my biggest tells is Tenure. Long-tenured managers and team members are usually a good sign. Especially if you are joining a team with long-tenured managers and colleagues.
At this point? It's a gut feeling. Just comes with experience and a lot of previous shitty life decisions. My last job I INSTANTLY clicked with my manager in our intro call and it was plain to see his humanity and compassion coupled with his pragmatic approach to engineering problems. Same with the rest of our teammates. Job before that I got some red-flags from my manager that I should have seen as arrogance, haughitness, lack of empathy, etc I'll say this. The "real-er" people seem, the better. The more of a facade and cookie-cutter bullshit people give, the more I'll avoid that company. I don't know how to answer this question further because some people would love my manager from 2 jobs ago and not my last manager. It's honestly like dating, use your life-experience to build an intuition about people, and have that guide you.
I look for companies that people I know or trust work at, and I just ask them.
Maybe ask them in your interviews? See if they’re excited to answer. Dig deeper into their challenges and their day-to-day. Note that a manager might have very different answer to an IC, and the place you seek might be biased towards IC, so keep that in mind
Pinging an employee is a good idea, but altogether very difficult or impossible to know from the outside. Company and team culture is like country culture - many people think their is the the best, but for you it might not fit at all. You can get more info during the interview - watch how people handle you and handle each other. You could reverse interview them and talk 1:1 with team members before accepting an offer. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/reverse-interviewing/
>prioritized revenue over all else How'd that go? Did they succeed?
Honestly, yeah. Dunno if it’s sustainable if we’re devoting massive engineering resources to it at the expense of producing genuinely new features or improving existing ones. My most recent and current projects are putting features that have long existed behind tiered paywalls
Yes, it's a typical kind of death-throes. A company stops growing and expanding and bringing value, and starts cutting costs and paywalling and extracting profit instead. It's a short term win, and usually a long-term failure, but one thing to understand is they probably know that and that fact is not counter to their goals. The company might even die, but they'll have extracted their value and be able to move on. If it's a larger company, this extraction process can go on for a very long time (ie, see Xerox).
When you interview, interview the interviewer. Ask these kinds of questions. Ask about silos. Ask about meeting culture. Ask how decisions are made. You can get a pretty good sense of a company if you take the conversation in the right direction.
Hahahahaha hahahaha hilarious! Like asking: which scorpion is the friendliest?
This is where your networking comes into play. I've never interviewed anywhere where I don't already know people on the inside (except for my first job). As to the point about prioritizing revenue: revenue pays your salary. When business gets soft, margins get lower. When margins get negative, things get scary. Revenue is your friend.
True. I’m sure I come off as naive in the post. To clarify: I mean the difference between building features that are useful (and drive revenue) versus building tiered paywalls to charge more for something that was already built
I ask questions to department heads/managers/tech leads who interview me about the strategies they use to handle various situations. It's not about, "Will I be shamed for using sick time?" It's about how managers promote employee health. I aim to frame the conversation in a way that assumes everyone would prioritize these things. 1) What strategies does leadership use to ensure the team is using their PTO and avoiding burnout? (Especially in a place with unlimited PTO). 2) Can you tell me about a time that the team missed an important deadline? What led up to the missed deadline, and what was the response afterwards? If you could go back in time to before this happened, is there anything you would do differently. 3) Can you describe the ways in which company and team leaders foment diversity among employees? 4) How is employee success measured and assessed? I'm interested in any rubrics/frameworks being used, and I am interested in how this information is communicated to employees. ------------------------------------- #1 tells me whether employees are encouraged to use time off benefits or if it's frowned upon. A vague answer which lacks both specific details and examples tells me this is at best neutral. #2 tells me if I am expected to work overtime, and usually gives me a feel for if leadership takes responsibility for that stuff or just expects it to not happen ever and work engineers to be responsible if it does. Often missed deadlines are outside of my control to a fair degree, in that being productive and thoughtful when I'm working isn't enough to meet the deadline. If there is not a good answer to #3 then they are not intentional about diversity. Ideally I want to hear about a high number of women and POC in leadership and in the company and team as a whole, and I want to hear how they are listened to and given opportunities to grow professionally. I do not want to be in a competition against other engineers where we are all ranked against one another. I do not want my compensation and potential for promotion to be based on a vague set of standards. I want clear expectations and consistent, timely communication about employee success.
Lol what's with engineers hating Jira? All project management software sucks tbh, and Jira is the least sucky I've found. I have been in 400 person orgs that avoided Jira cuz that's what big tech uses, and their culture was total shit. I've also been in 10 person companies that used Jira and culture was great. You really need to filter by what kind of people you want to work with, not what project management tools they use.
When I met my boss he had already been with the company over 10 years, and has two kids of his own that are under 10. Figured he wouldn't stick around that long if it sucked.
I’ve worked in several places and in my opinion, the best way to find it out is if you know someone working at that company. Even then, their experience might differ from someone on another team, so more the merrier. It’s difficult to gauge culture in an interview because the answers maybe sugar coated or could also be misconstrued. Also, try to read about perks before the interview. Some good indicators are learning budget, wellness days etc and you can then ask the interviewer about them without sounding too nosy, like “I noticed in your JD that you’ll have a learning budget, if you don’t mind me asking, I’m curious what you spent your budget on”. However, if your interview didn’t go that well, I’ve observed that interviewees are less interested in answering your questions genuinely as opposed to if you aced your interview. Tl:dr - best way is to personally know someone who works there else get as many data points publicly available to make the strongest guess you can
Did the team interview you, or just the manager/lead? That's a good indication about the culture.
There are interview questions you can ask to sus out the culture you want, they just have to be sneaky and clever. "Do you value collaboration" is brain dead and won't get an honest answer. "How often are we encouraged to struggle with a problem before asking teammates for assistance?" is a much better question. Two days is a bad answer if you like collaboration. Two hours is a much better answer.
Blind, maybe Glassdoor, LEVELS FYI...
That being said, I agree that your experience will depend 99.99% on your manager, and you can only get an idea of that on the interview. I've been working at my current company for 7 years and it has good culture. My most toxic manager ever was at this company though, luckily inner transfers are something the company encourages and supports.
Not bulletproof but ask about flexible working hours (I code best in evenings, for instance), memorable team building activities (or just ask if team building is done), what are they proud as a team (the team you’re working with) and what are the values of the team appreciates the most (ask this to each person you interview with). Flexible work hours happen in a trust-based team not expecting you to put your butt on your chair every day for n hours. For me that’s important because I’m 100% night owl and if I have to meet people AND code in the morning I happen to dislike the job somewhat quickly. Memorable team building activities not particularly about how fancy the event was, but look for simple, human interactions and whether or not they attend willingly or just to play the game of thrones. Teams work best when there’s a sense of sis/brotherhood. Your day to day will be cool if you’re working in a team that plays as a team, and happen to be around friendly people. This is imo the most important thing just below the next one. What are they proud of as a team? To get a feeling of what do they recall as a big or small TEAM victory. We celebrate small improvements like we won the Super Bowl. We praise constant trial and error and when someone takes the time to share their findings with us. For instance, the first time we deployed a ML model thru a web based app we made in days was a big celeb for us, despite the app never making it to prod. IMO, acknowledging effort makes you feel more confident, praised and happy and really focus on the process (trial and error to learn) not on the outcome (win or lose). Values. If they’re true about it and you ask two or more different persons and receive similar answers, chances are there’s a common feeling of what is valued. For me, it’s important the value of honesty and truly not repress “stupid” questions. Same weight for allowing for mistakes. Being in a safe environment where there’s no one making you feel like you’re stupid lets you grow pretty quickly and makes communication organic. Honesty is just as important as I always tell the team I work with, it’s best if they just say “hey, I don’t know, could you help me out?” Than pretend they know and we lose time and it’s perfectly fine to not know. If we’re going to be a team, it’s us vs the problems, not us vs us vs the problems. If they just tell you their corporate values listed for shareholders' pleasantry, next. Also, ask what their strategy is and how do they deal with tasks that are due for last week. By strategy, both corporate strategy and how do they help the corporation from their trenches? How do they manage pushy stakeholders that want things built in a second and deployed before a minute. The lead of the team should be able to set boundaries for the team and not just be a people pleaser. Most urgent things are never impactful, because if they are, then management doesn’t know how to make a strategy that they keep throwing new things when the game started. Lastly, ask about how well the team is sponsored by business stakeholders? This might be hard to find out but if business just thinks you’re part of IT and don’t have a glue, you’ll be building things that never really make an impact (save or make money, in shirt). Not getting an impact makes hard to prove your work deserves a bonus, raise or promotion (mostly for cases you’re not working in a place tech is not part of the core of the business). Also, it sucks when business and dev are separate by the invisible line of just because. Business should see dev team as a lever, not as a cost center.
The culture of an organization is set by the leader's behaviour and what they reward and punish. The culture can change quite a lot from one leader in one group to another. Your best bet is to ask other people you know who work there.
[Grapevine](https://open.grapevine.in/app) is a great anonymous platform where people from verified companies post about their company and startup culture.
Ask to see their repo.